On Nothing & Kindred Subjects

“I knew a man once, Maurice, who was at Oxford for three years, and after that went down with no degree. At College, while his friends were seeking for Truth in funny brown German Philosophies, Sham Religions, stinking bottles and identical equations, he was lying on his back in Eynsham meadows thinking of Nothing, and got the Truth by this parallel road of his much more quickly than did they by theirs; for the asses are still seeking, mildly disputing, and, in a cultivated manner, following the gleam, so that they have become in their Donnish middleage a nuisance and a pest; while he--that other--with the Truth very fast and firm at the end of a leather thong is dragging her sliding, whining and crouching on her four feet, dragging her reluctant through the world, even into the broad daylight where Truth most hates to be.”- Hilaire Belloc

First Page:

ON NOTHING & KINDRED SUBJECTS

BY

HILAIRE BELLOC

TO

MAURICE BARING

CONTENTS

ON THE PLEASURE OF TAKING UP ONE'S PEN

ON GETTING RESPECTED IN INNS AND HOTELS

ON IGNORANCE

ON ADVERTISEMENT

ON A HOUSE

ON THE ILLNESS OF MY MUSE

ON A DOG AND A MAN ALSO

ON TEA

ON THEM

ON RAILWAYS AND THINGS

ON CONVERSATIONS IN TRAINS

ON THE RETURN OF THE DEAD

ON THE APPROACH OF AN AWFUL DOOM

ON A RICH MAN WHO SUFFERED

ON A CHILD WHO DIED

ON A LOST MANUSCRIPT

ON A MAN WHO WAS PROTECTED BY ANOTHER MAN

ON NATIONAL DEBTS

ON LORDS

ON JINGOES: IN THE SHAPE OF A WARNING

ON A WINGED HORSE AND THE EXILE WHO RODE HIM

ON A MAN AND HIS BURDEN

ON A FISHERMAN AND THE QUEST OF PEACE

ON A HERMIT WHOM I KNEW

ON AN UNKNOWN COUNTRY

ON A FAËRY CASTLE

ON A SOUTHERN HARBOUR

ON A YOUNG MAN AND AN OLDER MAN

ON THE DEPARTURE OF A GUEST

ON DEATH

ON COMING TO AN END

King's Land,

December the 13th, 1907

My dear Maurice,

It was in Normandy, you will remember, and in the heat of the year,
when the birds were silent in the trees and the apples nearly ripe,
with the sun above us already of a stronger kind, and a somnolence
within and without, that it was determined among us (the jolly
company!) that I should write upon Nothing, and upon all that is
cognate to Nothing, a task not yet attempted since the Beginning of
the World... Continue reading book >>